Lookout Hollywood, here comes iVideoCamera!

Updates have rolled in and Laan Consulting's iVideoCamera (.99) which works with 2G & 3G now sports two recording options; the standard 160 x 213 and new 320 x 426 size!

Lets get the bad news out of the way, there’s a downside with the larger size, because you’re limited (I’m uncertain why) to how long a clip can be. Evidently the length of the clip you’re shooting must be stored in buffered memory, which for me has meant each clip is only about 20 seconds long until I reset it, then I was able to get long clips. Let’s hope these folks figure a way around this, because it easily bumps the standard Apple video recorder in 3Gs and future iPhones.

Now for the good stuff.

To start, the recording interface is clean and well laid out. On the bottom right is your selector of frame size, then your record button in the middle (I wish the color changed when you were recording but you do get elapsed time clock in the upper right), and on the left is where your clips are stored and the magic happens, because from here you can immediately upload your clips to six popular social networking/video sharing sites as well as e-mail. If you want to be a bit more creative, you can save your clips to the Camera Roll on your iPhone and…. that’s right your own little video editor to trip your clip just like on the 3Gs version! Though I give kudos for making this editor non-destructive, you cannot join different clips or still images – yet.

But wait, it keeps getting better.

You can upload your clips via wifi to your computer! iVideoCamera will give you your wifi address, but once you know it you can just bookmark it in Safari or whatever browser you’re using on your computer and load on up! I love my 2G, probably more than my 3G because it was one of the first iPhones I ever rebuilt, so I know it inside and out. Aside from that I like the feel and balance of it over the 3G, not to mention it’s really hard to beat the coolness of the aluminum case – the iPhone 2G was born looking retro. I cannot tell any difference in video quality or speed of how iVideoCamera is running on my 2G over 3G. Suddenly the 2G relevant all over again, since in a lot of people’s mind the biggest drawback was lack of video recording.

So why would anyone want decidedly low SD video from an iPhone, other than to get a few clips of the grandkids splashing in the pool? Let me point out a few uses other than the obvious cinematic.

Any football/soccer/baseball/basketball/hockey coaches reading? Want to have cheap, easy to review game side footage to show your athletes where to improve their game? Any real estate agents reading? Want to get a edge over other agents by putting up a quick, good quality virtual tour of that property that hasn’t moved in this sluggish economy. Any news industry people reading? Hey NBC is already broadcasting using Skype during prime time, why aren’t you getting the breaking news using your iPhone?

Do I need to go on?

Well I’ll go on but I want to focus on my interest, the arts. Here’s comes the iPhone Hollywood.

In fact there’s a whole genre of micro cinema springing up around this format, movies shot on low definition video cameras and even cell phones. This trend is well illustrated in the works submitted to the Disposable Film Festival, and others. But seeing is believing. To give you a sense of the cinematic potential of iPhone video, yes I said cinematic, take a look at this brief video shot entirely on my iPhone 3G with only light editing to put the clips together, otherwise all still images and video are shot and edited on my iPhone.

In case you're wondering, I shot all the video with my iPhone attached to a tripod using the U+3G iPhone holder by G Design LLC.

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